Facility Instruments

Bioinformatics Consultation

Bioinformatics consultation for the MPF is provided through a collaborative effort that includes Discovery Park’s Bindley Bioscience Center, the e-Enterprise Center, the Cyber Center, and the Discovery Park Applications Development team. The Computational Life Sciences and Informatics Core of the Bindley Bioscience Center provides a senior informatics scientist and a post-doc devoted to modeling of complex data sets. Programming services are available through the experienced Discovery Park Applications Development (DPAD) team on a favorable hourly rate or project-based basis and in collaboration with Discovery Park’s e-Enterprise and Cyber Centers.

Hardware at the Bindley Core includes 8 single or double cpu servers with either Linux or Windows operating systems, as well as a Dell 14 node Linux cluster for alignment and identification of peptides and metabolites. Software includes metabolite identification packages from Waters and Leco, the gene library system from GeneTac, Spotfire, and multiple protein identification packages (Sequest, Spectrum Mill, Mascot, !XTandem, Peaks, Lutefisk, etc.). The Genologics Proteus Laboratory Information Management System (LIMS) was installed early in 2006 for proteomics sample and data management, with Metabus LIMS expected to be available by late 2006. An electronic laboratory notebook has been developed and implemented in-house in cooperation with the e-Enterprise Center. A Center Microsoft Sharepoint space is establish for data sharing and project management.

Robotics

The Integrated Screening Technologies facility at the Bindley Bioscience Center includes 2 Bio-mek FX robotics systems for liquid handling, one with a Chroma-tek plate hotel. A Q-Pix II replication/picking robot is available for screening and isolation of expression constructs along with several PCR instruments including an MJ Research Dyad dual peltier block system. In addition to various plate fillers and washers both an MD UV-vis and a JY Fluromax 3 fluorescence reader are available for microtiter plate assay read-out.